


May the stars guide you

by offer



Category: Den lengste reisen | The Longest Journey
Genre: (with every possible gap filled in with lesbian emotion), Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Canon Compliant, F/F, Grief, Guilt, Longing, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27047785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/offer/pseuds/offer
Summary: For what I have done, I am already dead.Moments they shared in which they believed briefly in another life.
Relationships: April Ryan/Na'ane
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Longest Journey has been so close to my heart for years.
> 
> On rewatching playthroughs of the trilogy this summer I was like, April is really serving lesbian. And I fully think the betrayal plot would've THRIVED, would've SHINED, would've been pure PAIN with the melodrama and tragedy of a way more pronounced lesbian almost-romance. So here's my part in the timeless gay activity of picking apart canon for accidental lez subtext.
> 
> To be continued!

Candle flames flickered between them, sparks rising with smoke and falling, dissolving back into murky air. Their voices carried across the swamp water in waves, the occasional swell of group laughter traveling around the floating town and cutting corners like ghosts roaming between corridors. A fog encircled the open room they sat in, and even as close as they were, it was hard to make out exactly any other person's expression with the swamp's humidity veiling the breath connecting each of them.

— And I told him, Not a boy like me, sir, not a boy of my reputation, as you can very well see.

Brynn lobbed another hasty spoonful of soup into his smiling and talkative mouth.

— I swear, that Azadi looked at me like I told him the sky was green or something! Would've cracked me up, it well would've, if I wasn't being cornered by him. Christsake.

A couple of them snorted under their breath as they all took more generous helpings into their mouths. Chawan shifted his eyes over to Brynn, offering a disapproving look, one that April mirrored.

April pushed her spoon into her soup as if it would resist. She had her fingers tight around the handle, tense as they always were. She spoke.

— You should be more careful, Brynn.

— I was just-

— We can't get caught. We can't risk people coming back here. Don't make me say it again.

With the bowl resting in one palm, she rolled her wrist around in shallow circles. The spoon jutted out from between her thumb and the bowl's rim, hung in limbo. She took the bowl to her face and began to slurp it.

— Not like you were there to help me.

Without skipping a swallow, she shot Brynn a moment's look from beyond the bowl's edge. He responded.

— Whatever.

Brynn wiped his hands on his skirt as he helped himself up from the bench, taking his bowl and spoon with him. He scanned the table and reached around others to pick up any empty bowls and spoons of anybody else there who seemed to sit back lazily in a finished meal's satisfaction.

— I'm taking my night's rest, April. We will talk in the morning.

— That we will, Chawan. Take it easy.

The rest of the table filtered out over the next few minutes, saying their 'good night's to each other or heading off to prepare more before bed. Between sips, April muttered back 'alright's and 'in the morrow, then' to those who left. One of the two others left at the table, a new recruit, was a slow eater, and happened at a moment to glance at April, as if he were about to strike up conversation. While her face was covered by her bowl, he received some indistinct and still noted feeling from her and quickly stopped himself, slurping up the remainder of his soup, and excusing himself from the table.

— Until the morrow, Raven. Na'ane.

— Mhm.

— Stars to watch your slumber.

She took the bowl up to her lips again, sipping only meagerly now, letting most of it pool up on her upper lip. Though she had sat there dozens of times, there and here and was familiar to almost every corner of their swampy encampment, April shifted on her seat as if it were cold, untouched, and brand new. She felt a gaze on her, that she would have otherwise struck a fight with in any other situation and with any other person. But this was something else. She let it envelop her—cautious and afraid, but she let it, and it began to. A second later, her throat caught on itself and a question came out her mouth like a stream of jagged pebbles.

— How... how do you... like it here, then.

Na'ane hummed.

— I will be truthful with you, Raven. I miss my home. I miss the sun, my siblings, my family, even. But I am curious about the people here.

— Couldn't have been easy. I mean, leaving the lavish life of Irhad royalty for some middle of nowhere swamp in the Northlands.

A brief pause.

— This is not nowhere. This is a place as any. Perhaps more. There is life, there are people. There is song, and laughter. There is heart, here.

April glanced up, and met eyes with Na'ane, whose firm and curious look stayed rested on April's eyelids. April felt her insides move inside her in impossible ways. She swallowed.

— Sure, but I mean... I mean, well. I don't know what I mean.

— If you mean to ask, do I regret coming? My answer is no. The stars guided me here, and I follow them.

They left another silent step between them.

— Do you regret your journey here?

— Huh?

— You have come here too, I take it. Traveled here, not a child of this region. There are not many rebels who were born in this town, I believe, from what I have observed. Do you regret your journey here?

— I- never. No. I'm needed here. People need me here.

Na'ane roamed, again with her eyes, over April's face, as if she was feeling it with a sense other than sight, brushing from eyelid to eyelid, temple to temple, one corner of April's mouth to another, along the curve of April's jaw. They seemed to sit there for ages, Na'ane reading April, but the interaction could have been no longer than a second or two.

— I see.


	2. Chapter 2

She dipped the cloth towel into the pail of water again, clasped her palms around its sides, and wrung it out. When it finished dripping, she brought the cloth to the man's forehead. The same motion she had been doing for the past 30 days, three times a day, with diligence, without fail.

The curve of her mouth stayed steady while she carried out her regular routine. Her eyes lay on him with the flatness of a sight she saw so many times a day. She pressed the cloth to his flesh, to the exact level that a couple drops of water dripped to his temples, then turned her wrist and brushed the cloth back up.

She took the cloth across his scalp, as she did once a day. Her mind stilled and she let her hands do their duty. They needed to heal him. She had hands that were needed. She had hands that could heal, and for that reason, they kept her there. She let her hands take the cloth back to the pail, and twist it until cascades of water ribboned back into the small pool.

But it was when she did so, like every time that she did so, that she felt the sensation of hands reaching at the edges of her and rotating her insides around, back and forth. Squeezing her, draining her, as she knew she well deserved. Screaming, crying, she heard all of it and squeezed the cloth in opposing directions even tighter. Anything but this, but that awful sound.

Some days, when she took the towel across the bridge of his nose and to his cheek, where he had many dots etched into his skin, she felt her eyes wet. The inner swell in her chest from one of many features of April's coming unwillingly to her in her idle time. This time, the small mole on her right cheek. Other days, her earrings. The other marks that dotted her face, which she called freckles. The burn scars on her right hand. Callouses on her palms. The slash, remnant of a wound, on her left side, that Na'ane herself had healed, the first of several of April's wounds she had healed. She remembered, out of a sense of both obligation and desperate impossible longing, the feel of each part. She felt their memory in every notch between every finger.

She took the towel to water again, tensing her hands until they hurt. She wrung it out in pathetic apology, over and over, as she did every day, three times a day, until the day he would awaken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on the bit in Chapters where Once-Blind Bob tells Kian that Na'ane stayed by his side like she was "repaying a debt."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little pre-canon moment.

Between her fingers balanced a blue stone pendant on a leather cord, swinging in a gentle arc back and forth. She blinked slow. Those thin slits of flesh slid over her eyes. With her breath slowed, she ensured that she steadied herself enough, torso to foot. One hand laid tucked in a deep fold of her robe, cautious and kept to herself even if it meant she was just that bit off-balance. Years ago, in hazy memory in a sunnier place, she learned to bend herself in a way that was inviting, shy of hovering; close, shy of stifling.

— Ne'a, ama'm, ean-

A cough.

Na'ane blinked.

— Raven, the ritual may not follow if you do not remain still.

— Right, Na'ane. Right. I'm sorry. Could you try again?

Na'ane breathed in and fixed her line of sight into April's, until the latter closed her eyes. April attempted to calm down, get herself to that rumored haven where the wood of the cabin around her dissolved, every piece of furniture made way for open air, all tension in her body evaporated. She inhaled, surrounded for a moment only by the distant buzz of her own thoughts and the steady cadence of Na'ane's voice.

A patch in the burlap sitting unassuming on the cot in which she laid began to itch at her.

Her eyebrows drew together as if pulled by a thread in the center of them.

— Ne'a, ama-

A twitch of her eyebrow, and scrunch of her nose.

Na'ane paused, readying herself to pull her back up, waiting on April's cue.

— I'm sorry, Na'ane. Again? I promise, this time, I won't budge.

April cleared her throat, smacked her tongue against the back of her teeth, and closed her eyes. She stretched her shoulders back and slid an inch from right to the left on the bed, as if to adjust herself into comfort.

She stayed tense, only then in another direction.

Na'ane tilted her head down, let her arm drift back to her side, and hinted a smile. Then, April felt a warmth draw closer to her.

— May I?

April opened her eyes to find Na'ane slightly bent, ready to either descend into the cot or erect herself again, holding herself just in the right position to do either with grace and no awkward feeling.

— Oh. Sure.

April lifted her shoulders from the sheets, and scooted herself a few inches closer to the wall. Na'ane smoothed the back of her robe, and let herself onto the cot.

— I hope I am not discomforting you.

— Wh- oh, I- no. Not at all. Why do you say that?

— It is, perhaps, too personal for me to say, but a tenseness seems to hold your heart.

April blinked, only to allow herself a moment to break eye contact with Na'ane. She drew her eyelids down and her eyesight to her far right, drawing it to the deepest crack in the closest corner of the room.

— There is nothing to be ashamed of. Many who have tried this with have held the same, especially their first time.

Na'ane pulled her hand, then curved around the edge of the cot, to her lap. She held her back a bit straighter, as if to allow April that much more room for herself. Before her own knowledge, April relaxed the side of her closest to Na'ane, letting herself fall, maybe unwilling, that much closer.

— So, what did they do then? To make themselves- to get to sleep.

— Sometimes, they may be lulled by a series of deep breaths. Others draw themselves to slumber with a warm cloth placed on the head. Many, most, though, let the night pass, and we try again the night following, until they may drift off peacefully.

— You're saying- nothing. You're saying people do nothing, just 'hope' and try again and again.

Na'ane angled down by a breath's width, closing in on the gap between shyness and intimacy, to turn toward April.

— That hope has guided even the weariest to slumber. There are many ways to get to sleep, Raven. Many options open to you. Many have a grip on their heart, the same grip I feel on yours, but not everybody can let go of such tension in the same way.

— I don't have time to try all kinds of ways. I just need to get to sleep.

— This was your first time attempting the ritual, Raven. It is not uncommon for people to feel a bit nervous, which keeps them from relaxation, and therefore slumber.

— I'm not nervous.

Na'ane tilted her head, keeping herself from a laugh, not knowing whether or not it would further upset the other woman before her, not knowing her well enough yet. She smiled, to release the feeling.

April glanced at Na'ane, and turned her head toward the wall. In less than a second, she shifted her weight to the opposite side and crouched her shoulders away.

A moment passed between them like a breeze, though that would not have happened in Myria, in a place as damp and humid as where they were.

— Raven, if I may ask.

Silence.

Na'ane blinked, then opened her mouth as if to test the risk she was about to take.

— Is it the possibility of shifting again... that makes you-?

In a breath, the thickness of the air descended on both of them like a heavy curtain falling. They sunk into the shallow cot. April, now curled into herself even moreso from her impulse to turn away—embarrassed by her own embarrassment—tensed her entire body as if she were both huddling into a shell and readying a shield. Her eyes, though, pulled toward Na'ane, and what she saw drew the breath from her in thin, misty strings.

Between all of April's small movements, Na'ane let her eyes rest on April, observing, open, patient. April swallowed, no doubt the humidity of the air around them filling her too, and she inhaled it, willingly. April swallowed and fear rose inside her.

A thought crossed Na'ane's mind that perhaps she sat here out of a selfish habit. Perhaps she came to fulfill her own curiosity, more than out of concern, if there was any concern at all. Perhaps she came, following the same pull she had followed toward others before, the same pull that always later wound around and around her to bind her in resentment after she completed the wish it whispered to her—the great and small satisfaction of cracking an impossible shell open with her own hands.

She turned her palms upward in her lap, then clasped her thumbs one over the other with a light press.

— No. I- lost that. A long time ago. Part of me thought, maybe- not just to sleep, but- that if anybody could bring that back, it would be- well- it won't. It won't come back.

Both moved.

— But, no. That's not... why I'm nervous.

Na'ane hummed.


End file.
